Sheriff Robert Pickell declared an overcrowding emergency Thursday, Dec. 13, the second time he's been forced to bring down the jail population through actions starting with the release of inmates with relatively low bonds.

Pickell said that the jail was holding 648 people Thursday, well over its capacity of 580. The sheriff said the "jail is simply too small" to house all of those awaiting trials and accused of serious crimes in the county.

"We could build a bigger jail, but who's going to pay for it?" Curtis asked. "There's just no money and every day the state takes more and more from us. We don't have the revenue stream coming in."

Pickell also said a larger jail isn't the cure to the area's violent crime problem.

Curtis said the arrival of additional prosecutors as part of Gov. Rick Snyder's public safety initiative for crime-ridden cities like Flint should help move criminal cases along faster, freeing up jail cells as many of the accused are sentenced to state prison.

Curtis said the addition of police officers in the city of Flint -- funded by a new public safety millage -- will also help free up officers to go to court when scheduled, cutting down on the need to reschedule key court dates.

In addition to the current declaration, an overcrowding emergency was declared earlier this year at the jail as well. That emergency ended Oct. 22 after 42 days.

More than 1,500 inmates were released from the jail during the first overcrowding emergency, according to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by The Flint Journal.

The county's data did not show how many of those inmates were released due to the overcrowding emergency and how many were regularly scheduled to be released.